The Word
by rw4life
Summary: Blaine, Kurt, Sebastian, Santana and Dave reflect on their experiences with gay bashing.


He was 11 years old when he first heard the word. It was cold, harsh, and uttered along with a shove that had knocked the young boy to the floor. He wasn't sure what the word had meant, but he cried anyways. When he came home and asked his mom what it meant, her usual bright smile dropped from her face quickly. She told him that it was a bad word and he shouldn't say it again; "_don't tell your father,_" before she invented some thing she had to do in another room. He sat in the living room that evening and watched T.V, not really paying attention as the word circled around and around in his head. When his father asked him how his day had been, Blaine responded with the usual, "Fine." His mother smiled encouragingly from the other end of the table, but the smile didn't quite reach her eyes.

That night he called Cooper, who was away at college. After the usual joking around, he asked about the word. There was a long pause on the other end of the line, "_Did someone call you that?"_ He nodded, before realizing that Coop couldn't see him, "yea...mom said it's a bad word. But what does it mean?" This next pause was even longer, Blaine checked to see if they were still connected. They were. "_It's a bad word, yes. But...you know how girls and boys like each other, right?_" "Like you and Ashley?" "_Yea. Well, sometimes, boys like boys and girls like girls." _Blaine took a moment to absorb this information, "Yeah, I know...they're..._gay_, right?" He said, whispering the last bit. "_Yes Blaine, they're gay." _His brother said, with far more determination, "_The word that kid called you today...it's a bad word for gay. It's said by dumb people who don't realize that people are free to love whoever they love, it's not a choice." _Another long pause followed, "I don't think I like boys though...I mean, I don't like girls yet, but, I- why would he call me that?" "_I dunno bro," _the older boy sighed on the other line, "_But you know that no matter what, I love you right?"_ "I know...why wouldn't you?" Blaine grinned, "I'm awesome." His brother laughed on the other end and the tension was broken, they moved on to talk about their plans for the weekend and when Coop would come to visit again. Now when the kids at school called him names, he tried to remind himself that they were ignorant. When they shoved him during recess, he tried to remember that everyone has the freedom to love who they love. And on the night of the Sadie Hawkins dance, when his parents looked at his broken body in the hospital with disapproval, he tried to remember that his brother loved him no matter what.

.

He was 8 when he first heard the word. He was used to being called a girl, a wuss, a baby, teacher's pet, loser. But this was a new one. And it seemed somehow...crueler. The name was like a slap in the face as the nice boy from across the street yelled at him for having a tea party. "_Go home Kurt. I don't want a faggot like you to scare off my friends while we're trying to play __**boy**__ games."_ Kurt used to play with this kid, he used to be one of those friends Steven played with...they'd even had a tea party together not so long ago (though Steven did say no to wearing a boa). Steven had never called him names, he'd never been cruel, but now his narrowed eyes and sneering face told a different story. "Oh, I didn't realize that being mean and stupid was a game." He had retorted, before turning on his heel and walking back inside. Once inside he ran to his mommy and cried, not too concerned about the word, more upset with the fact that he thought Steven was his friend. She soothed him calmly, letting him cry it out for a few minutes before he'd collected himself enough to ask about the word. He felt his mother tense underneath him for a moment, so he knew it was bad, but then she petted his head the way he liked and told him; "Kurt, don't let his words hurt you. He is a mean, mean boy and I don't think he understands just what that word means. So why don't you go run and get the dictionary, we'll look it up." Kurt of course jumped at the opportunity for a word scavenger hunt and pulled out the old worn Webster's. He turned to F, "a bundle of sticks or twigs, especially for use as fuel." He looked up at his mother, one eyebrow raised. She shook her head and shrugged, smiling. He then burst into laughter and they chased each other around the house in a tickle fight for the next few hours. That night, when his father returned from work, he grinned as he announced that today, he was called a bundle of sticks! His father looked confused for a moment, turning to his wife...she looked slightly guilty. After dessert, his parents took him to the living room and explained that the word had taken on a different meaning over the years. They told him it was a mean and ignorant way to refer to guys who liked other guys. They told him they loved him, and not to let anyone ever make him feel like he was anything short of amazing. So when the word caught on at school, he imagined they were calling him a bundle of twigs. When they made fun of his voice, he remembered that they were mean and dumb. When they shoved him into lockers he tried to remember that he was nothing short of amazing. He stopped having tea parties in his front yard.

.

He was 6 when he heard the word. He was watching a football game with his father, and one of the players had fumbled, "_Oh come on you stupid faggot, it's not so hard to just hang on to the damn ball." _He had heard stupid, he had heard damn...he knew they were bad words, he knew that his father got like this during games and he needed to never repeat those words. But he had never heard that other word. But he assumed it was bad, so later that night, when he asked his mother about it, he made sure to whisper it. "Mama, what does _faggot_ mean?" She sighed and bent down, "Ah mon cher...you should not use that word you know?" He nodded his head and accepted one of the freshly baked cookies she'd just made. "Merci maman..." he mumbled through his mouthful of cookie. "De rien Sebastian!" she tossed back carelessly as she turned back to the stove to take out the rest of the tray. It was a few more years before he heard the word again.

He was almost 12 and they were moving to Paris to be with his mother's family. His best friend Patrick had come to say his final goodbyes, and on a whim, he had leaned in to kiss his older friend. The boy of course had scrambled away as fast as he could before screaming at him, "Ew, guys don't do that shit. I'm not some fairy, you _faggot_!" He then sprinted out of the house. They never spoke again. That time, when he asked about the word, it was his father that answered. "Someone called you that?" he said, raising his eyebrows and studying his kid. He had shrugged and mumbled, "Yeah..." His father cocked his head to the side, shrugged his shoulders and turned back to his newspaper, "It depends how it was used...it's an insult that either means you were being a wuss or you like guys," he flipped to the next page of the paper. So when they moved to Paris, he decided he liked guys, but he was never a wuss.

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She was 13 when she heard the word. Her uncle had been staying with her grandmother for some time now and was in one of his drunken stupors again. She had come over for dinner and he was in the middle of insulting everyone from the building he had just been evicted from. "Bunch of dykes the whole lot of 'em, that fucking landlord kicked me out cause I didn't have a set of tits." Her grandmother had just rolled her eyes and looked appalled, "Christopher, not in front of Santana! Have some sense!" Santana had just laughed because her mother had told her on countless occasions that Christopher was an idiot, and she shouldn't listen to a word he said. "It's fine abuelita, Chris is an insensitive moron. We already knew that..." Her grandmother sighed as the other two just began to banter back and forth. A few months passed before Santana thought of the word again, so she looked it up online, and found out what it meant. In high school she began to think that maybe the word applied to her, but she continued to ignore it for the most part. It wasn't until she came out to her grandmother that she understood exactly how much weight that word carried. It wasn't until her grandmother couldn't even look at her that she understood what the word meant to her loving abuelita. She cried for days, and even Brittany couldn't cheer her up. She tried to remember that Santana never cared what anyone thought about her, she tried to remember that her mother, her friends and Brittany loved her. She tried to remember that words could never hurt her.

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He was 12 when he heard the word. He had just finished a game of football with the neighborhood boys and they were heading home when they ran into some slight high school kid he couldn't remember the name of. "_Hey fag, have you come to play football?" _He stood aside and laughed as they pushed him around, not really knowing what else to do. Over the course of the next few months, he noticed that the guys he hung around with always targeted the little effeminate looking boys to use that word on. He looked it up online, _oh okay,_ now he knew what it meant. So when it was his turn to be a highschool football player, he saw the thin, fashionable blue-eyed kid...he fit the mold for the insults, but his level of confidence threw him off. So he threw him into a locker. And he hurled insults, slushies and shoves at him. The word was frequently scrawled onto the bathroom stalls and in the locker rooms. When someone played a bad game, the word was used to motivate. The word almost lost its meaning until the day he entered the locker room of his new school and saw it scrawled across his locker in red. He was a fag. He was a wimp, he was a sissy, he was wrong to like guys. The fact that he'd had thrown the word at Kurt so many times, that this is what that brave boy went through everyday at McKinley plagued him every night that week. But he was diseased, he was weak, he didn't have Kurt's confidence. But he had a belt, a chair and self-loathing.

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><p>AN I know it just ends there, and badly, but I figured I'd post it before it became irrelevant once the new episodes came out. Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated! Let me know what you think in a review!


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